


of roses and fleeing cats

by orphan_account



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: FLUFF!!, M/M, Wonwoo the flower nerd, they're in love and kind of oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 17:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21057944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Were you stealingflowers?” the boy says, his voice dripping with disbelief. “I thought you were some drunk pervert pissing against the lilies.”“Roses,” Wonwoo mumbles, unable to bite on his tongue before it slips out.“Sorry?”“Those are roses, not lilies,” Wonwoo says, swallowing and staring at his shoes.Or: Wonwoo goes to take a walk at night and steals a flower of the boy he's been crushing on for some time.





	of roses and fleeing cats

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in my head for SO long i'm glad i can focus on other stuff now!!! meanie nation i'm sorry

Sometimes Wonwoo takes walks home at night when the sun has long set and there would be stars to be soon on the night sky when Wonwoo didn’t live in one of the most populated areas of his city.

It’s insomnia sometimes what keeps him up till the literal crack of dawn; either because he’s taken a 12-hour-nap after he’d returned from class and did his homework or because he gets into his head sometimes, worrying about the littlest things so he decides to get some fresh air. His roommate, Soonyoung, has taken some time to get used to Wonwoo’s nocturnal escapades but now, after almost a year of being Wonwoo’s best friend, he gets it. Gets that that’s just how Wonwoo works.

Sometimes he picks up flowers on his walk through parks or even to the suburbs where the rich live and have the prettiest front yards with even prettier flowers. They won’t mind if he takes a tiny tulip here or a tiny rose there, will they? On really bad nights, he comes back with a bouquet, a mish-mash of all kinds of flowers that oddly still fit together, some leaves and grass in there, too, Wonwoo’s fist tight around the flowers. At first, Wonwoo was freaked out about how he sometimes _blacks out _on his way until he’s suddenly somewhere he’s never been before, no internet connection and a collection of blue, red, yellow flowers in his hand.

He dry-presses the flowers he’s collected and puts them in his journal or he puts them in a vase and decorates the living room table with it. Soonyoung calls him a loser for it, not the going on walk thing but the flower collecting. Wonwoo just shrugs and continues reading his book. It isn’t his fault that Soonyoung doesn’t know the orange tulips on the table is him telling Soonyoung how much he appreciates him. Wonwoo had even texted him a Wikipedia link to the meaning of flowers after he’d come home with the tulips (he’s not good with words, okay?), but Soonyoung continued to prove the world that he was and will always be an idiot.

The reason why Wonwoo is out this evening, however, isn’t his head getting the better of him. Soonyoung has company over, his friend Seokmin. Beforehand, Soonyoung had told him to put on some noise-cancelling headphones when Seokmin came over. Wonwoo had spent twenty minutes educating Soonyoung about safe sex and STDs and congratulated Soonyoung for finally getting laid before Soonyoung had shushed him and said that they’d be playing Mario Kart and Seokmin had a pretty loud voice.

And, god, Seokmin _did _have a loud voice.

So, Wonwoo is out, walking around in a noble neighbourhood and gawking at the yards and hoping he’d be an owner of such a collection of flowers and trees one day. He halts in front of a stock of lavender roses. The sun doesn’t shine anymore, there’s just the street lamps and the light coming from inside of some houses, and yet their intense pigmentation makes Wonwoo gape (he’s glad Soonyoung isn’t here to laugh at him right now). He’s sure he’s never seen a rose, or another flower for that matter, of such a beautiful colour.

_Love at first sight_, his mind supplies and Wonwoo smiles.

He frowns when he sees one of the flowers had been snapped off, probably too much water-pressure while watering them, and the ends of the blossoms had started to go limp.

He hesitates. He could take the rose right here and no one would ever notice. The lights in the house are out—it‘s way past eleven anyways—and they surely wouldn’t mind him taking a flower bound to turn brown and crinkly. What kind of a difference does it make if he takes the flower right now or if the gardener cuts it off the next morning?

So carefully and quietly, he leans over the fence. The flower is in pretty close reach and Wonwoo takes the stem between his fingers, careful of the spikes, and pulls, gently twisting it. His tongue pokes out between his lips and he has his eyes narrowed in concentration. Just when he’s got the flower in his hand—his unharmed hands—the light of the front porch turns on and a flashlight shines directly into Wonwoo’s face. He shrieks and his hands fly to his face to stop himself from blinding anymore than he already is.

“What are you doing in my garden?” a young voice calls out and if Wonwoo hadn’t been still terrified of losing his eyesight, he would have looked up. The voice sounds oddly familiar. He considers commenting on the fact that he did get the Shrek reference, but he remembers in what kind of situation he is in, right now and decided not to. He opts for “Could you not point the flashlight directly at my face?” instead.

“Ah, right,” the other man says quickly, lowering the light. Wonwoo looks up and sees a young man, about his age, standing on the porch of the house, clad in plaid pyjamas and a cat in his hold. Wonwoo‘s sight isn‘t well enough to make out who‘s standing there a few metres away from him.

“Were you stealing _flowers_ ?” the boy says, his voice dripping with disbelief. “I thought you were some drunk pervert pissing against the lilies.”

“Roses,” Wonwoo mumbles, unable to bite on his tongue before it slips out.

“Sorry?”

“Those are roses, not lilies,” Wonwoo says, swallowing and staring at his shoes.

“Yeah whatever,” the other says and Wonwoo is glad he doesn’t scold him for it. Whenever he talked back at his parents _while _they were already giving him an earful, he wasn’t allowed to use his computer for a week. “So, were you stealing flowers, then, stranger?”

Wonwoo notices that the other boy doesn’t sound mad at all, amused was more fitting, almost as if he was mocking Wonwoo. He isn’t sure if this is better.

“I, I guess I was. It was just one. And it’s already getting wilted at the edges,” Wonwoo scrambles to explain himself. “I can give it back to you, though.”

There’s a moment of silence before a hearty laugh fills the otherwise empty road. Wonwoo blushes but can’t hide a smile himself either. “You can keep it, dummy. This is my parents’ house and I’m just house-keeping while they’re in China, visiting their family.”

Wonwoo isn’t sure what to say, so he just nods. What else is he supposed to do when he gets caught stealing other people’s property and other people turns out to be a talkative young man who talks about his family without even knowing Wonwoo’s name.

“Why are you even up?” Wonwoo asks, out of curiosity. He and the stranger are on such good terms at the moment anyway.

“My cat, Minghao, had been gone and I was looking for him. And then I saw someone moving behind our _roses_,” he explains. Wonwoo guesses the stranger is just lonely, who knows how long he’s been house-keeping his parents’ house, and that’s why he’s so conversable at half-past eleven in the evening.

Suddenly, there’s footsteps and the stranger walks down the stone path to the gate of the front yard and Wonwoo walks up to him with unsure steps. “Wonwoo? Is that you?”

Wonwoo stares at his face with confusion written all over his face. Admittedly, the stranger has a handsome face. His sharp eyes make him look an awful lot like the cat purring in his arm, he had a nose a lot of models and actors would pay lots of money for, and his lips were stretched into a warm smile. He suddenly remembers why the other boy seemed so familiar. It was Junhui from university. His crush, but don‘t tell Soonyoung or he‘ll go crazy.

Wonwoo needs a moment to realise he had been asked a question.

“Yeah, it’s me. How do you know me?” Wonwoo tries not to show he‘s been obsessing over Junhui for the past two months.

Junhui chuckles. “We’re in the same mathematics class, but I’m sitting in the last row so I’m not surprised you don’t recognise me. You’re always hovering over your laptop anyways,” he laughs. “You’re always taking so many notes, and I haven’t even written a complete page the whole semester.”

Wonwoo frowns. Has he been staring at him in class?

“Oh, I’m Junhui by the way.”

Wonwoo nods slowly. “You’re sitting next to that guy with the mullet who looks like he wants to be anywhere else but that class.”

Junhui laughs again, throwing his head back, startling the cat in his arm who narrows his eyes at his owner. “That’s Minghao, the name-giver for this little fella here,” he explains and holds up the cat and noses its fur.

“The resemblance is uncanny,” Wonwoo says dryly, though he isn’t lying. He watches Junhui pet the cat, and for the second time that night, he isn’t fast enough to bite his tongue. “Are you dating? You and Minghao, I mean. The human, not the cat.”

Junhui slowly raises his head to look at Wonwoo, and he looks like he’s trying really hard to not start cackling or else Minghao—the cat—will run away again. “Oh God, no. Minghao hates me too much for it. We’re just bros, nothing more. That means I’m single.”

Wonwoo wonders why Junhui tells him about his relationship status, but then again it’s Junhui, and Wonwoo really should stop getting surprised about his antics.

The light from the lamp post shines right onto the mop of Junhui’s brown hair, creating a golden glow around his head. Wonwoo would be lying if he hadn’t stolen a few glances at Junhui before, when the other wasn’t looking, busy with poking Minghao’s—the human’s—sides or showing him pictures on his phone. And when Junhui just turned his head in his direction, Wonwoo whipped his head around, pretending to listen to the professor and took notes on his laptop which were just keyboard slams in reality. At one point, Soonyoung had stopped asking for his notes.

Hearing Minghao—the human—and Junhui actually weren’t a thing had really relieved him if he was being honest.

“So, I can really keep the flower, yes?” Wonwoo asks, just to make sure.

Junhui smiles at him, cheeks rising and nose scrunching up. “Of course you can. Let me just get a wet paper towel for you, so the rose still looks pretty when you get back home,” Junhui suggests, not listening to Wonwoo saying it wasn’t necessary. He gently drops Minghao—the cat—on the floor and goes inside the house, almost tripping over his own feet. The black-furred cat slowly paces towards Wonwoo, and he crouches down to pet him. Minghao—the cat—pushes his head against Wonwoo’s outstretched hand and purrs when Wonwoo starts to tickle him under his chin.

“You’re the first one he doesn’t bite,” Junhui’s voice startles him and he pulls his hand away like he’s been burnt. Minghao—the cat—immediately follows his hand, wanting to get petted some more.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—,” Wonwoo starts but Junhui waves him off. He hands him the wet paper towel—except it neither wet nor a paper towel.

“Junhui, this isn’t wet,” Wonwoo says slowly, brown furrowed as he tries to understand the situation.

“Look,” the other says, cryptically. Wonwoo turns the piece of paper around and sees a number on it. Junhui’s number. _Oh_.

“See you around, Wonwoo,” Junhui smiles again and waves at Wonwoo. Wonwoo can only wave back and slowly makes his way away from the gate. He fiddles with the paper in one hand and stares at the flower in his other hand. Just before he’s about to leave the road Junhui lives in, he turns around. The lights are still on, and if Wonwoo squints hard enough, he can see Junhui still standing there with his cat in his arm.

_Love at first sight._

Wonwoo doesn’t hesitate for a second when he saves Junhui’s contact and sends him the link to the Wikipedia page about the meaning of flowers.

(Turns out, Junhui is just as dense as Soonyoung, and he only gets it after Wonwoo explains it to him on their third date.)

October, 2019

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! comments and kudos are appreciated as always!


End file.
